Thursday, November 20, 2008

Brain Tattoos and Doublethink: The Japanese Popstars and Jon Ryman

This post is another double feature to showcase two different electronic records that I'm excited about right now. The first is the debut album from Northern Irish trio The Japanese Popstars (We Just Are due to release in North America in January 2009) and the second is the fifth album from Jon Ryman (Nineteen Eighty-Four which just released this year). The former has gritty, dirty beats akin to Justice, Boys Noize and MSTRKRFT while the latter emulates smoother synthpop similar to The Human League, Depeche Mode and New Order.

Consisting of Declan McLaughlin, Gary Curran and Gareth Donoghue, The Japanese Popstars are exactly what I want to hear on the dancefloor. We Just Are begins aptly with We Just Are (Intro) - a confident declaration that pulses with metallic starbursts around the simple vocal sample. From here, you are taken into a world of fantastically brash and hypnotic electro, where you are under their purview and held in compliance with your will. The first track proper, Sample Whore, built around samples of "ohs" and "ahs," is a perfect blend of the lusty and clinical while Face Melter does just what it says on the tin (I'm still trying to mop up the remainder of my face from the floor). Then Delboys Revenge kicks in with a jackhammer insistence, but a needle-like precision soon backed by lasers that slice through your cranium.

As a refreshing reversal to the assault of Delboys Revenge, B.C.T.T. provides a gentler, poppier side with breathier rhythms and the heart rate comes down for awhile as the delicacy of the track washes over you like cool antiseptic. Dr. Frenchy Bernard continues the gentler arc with springy synths and old-school bleeps, creating a mini electro symphony. Anthepic (We Have Taken Over) begins to bring back harsher, dirtier beats, smudging up the otherwise pristine technicality of the track, and by the point the wispy vocals that declare "Just like you asked us to, we have taken over you" increase into a hynotic maelstrom, you realize that they have indeed taken over. Rising slowly from beneath the previous track, The Smile wends its way insidiously and surreptitiously into the folds of your grey matter.

However, it only serves as an introduction to the epic Rise of Ulysses, a whizzing, buzzsaw return to the grimier earlier tracks of the album. With its demonic chant of "rise!" at various points, it injects a darker pigment into the heart of the record. With rapid metallic beats and clipped cymbals, Total Distorted Mayhem, like Face Melter, is rather self-explanatory. A barely detectable "Come in, just jump in" pulses between rhythms like a shadow of an Id. The next track, F19b (Droppin' Bombs), definitely sounds like bombs dropping in a constant loop, ultimately merging to sound like a siren against gritty, hollow beats. Like most of the tracks on this record, it puts you into a rather pleasurable trance. To tie the album up in a consistent circuit, it ends with We Just Are (Finalizer), once again deliberately declaring their existence. It builds from a low hum into scales of fuzzy tonalities before bursting rather unexpectedly into sunny, jubilant melodies, like pure endorphin being shot into your veins. The Japanese Popstars have also just released a free download of an unreleased track called Electronic Poet, which is equally as brilliant as the album and which I've made available below. If I opened my skull right now, I have a feeling The Japanese Popstars would be tattooed all over the surface of my cerebrum.

Unlike The Japanese Popstars, Jon Ryman's music is on the softer, synthier side of electronic music. I was actually made aware of the Brighton-based artist several months ago via MySpace, but I didn't take a proper listen until now. Ryman has been creating music since the '80s (including under the name Interloper) and has also worked on music for television. This particular album - Ryman's fifth studio album - is loosely based on George Orwell's 1984, the book that has spawned many a song and record. However, rather than seem clichéd, this record breathes new life into the seminal story, especially with its classic analogue feel. Somehow it is hugely fitting that an old novel set in the future, which is now the increasingly distant past, is set to new music in a style that was considered futuristic decades ago. Ryman also pushes Orwell's ideas into the 21st century, demonstrating how visionary Orwell was in predicting that everyone would eventually experience information overload to the point of apathy, a world where everything is propaganda and everything is under surveillance.

The album begins with an introductory message delivered by a voice from a retro computer that promises to play a happy song for you. The first track proper is New Corporate Mass, which ticks away like a hollow machine before pulsing with sparkly waves of synth and a rather robotic Latin hymn sung by a vocoderized human in a world in which the new religion is controlled by the corporations via the government. The album then shifts into Humanized, one of the catchiest tracks on the album. It slinks along to a cabaret feel and features one of my favourite lyrics: "a paper tiger in a cage." Overexposure places the Big Brother-induced paranoia against a relatively deadpan vocal and a backdrop of some of the best New Wave synthpop I've heard lately. Its sentiments display the ever-present (and ever-realistic) problem of minds being inundated with unwinnable wars and loaded terms that mean nothing to keep them from thinking critically. Breaking through this noise, Julia, an ode to the protagonist, Winston's, love interest in the novel, is full of crystalline synthesizers, reflecting a New Wave dancefloor beneath a discoball made of ice and circuitboard. The narrator of the song, who we can assume is Winston, appears to be experiencing a reawakening, shaking off apathy for a moment and attempting deeper thoughts, including rather profound ones like "maybe I'm just circumstance, nothing more." The next track, Autocue, flows along to a beat reminiscent of Tears For Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World as what sounds like telephone rings tinkle in the background. It becomes the perfect atmosphere for lyrics telling how the monolithic corporation assumes its own impersonal, singular soul, acting as an individual driven by greed and drained of humanity while running on automatic pilot. Autocue drifts seamlessly into Stars Fall, which returns to vocoder and beautiful, soaring melody.

Breaking this dreamlike mood, Rhythm Machine begins with the same computerized voice from the intro asking you to enter an access code. The song then moves into clinical vocals paired with razor-sharp precise rhythm worthy of Kraftwerk, contrasting with the free-flow of the movement in Julia - this is what dance music is when computers create it on their own. Oneohone, which is named for the dreaded Room 101 of the novel, begins with echoey snatches of voices and random sounds before ominous synths slip in to create an air of nightmare and imprisonment. Beginning with whizzes and static, Omnipresent continues the dark, horrific feel of Oneohone, setting a scene in which fear is palpable. Nowhere Left To Run follows with a rather restrained rhythm framed by further whizzes as a rather resigned vocal sings the song's title over and over. The record concludes with Acid Music, a bouncy, scrambled track that sounds like both a mental collapse and a system failure, poignantly demonstrating our propensity for treating machines like humans and humans like machines: machines get viruses while humans break down. Nineteen Eighty-Four is retro, but never cheesy, which is quite an achievement, and I hope Ryman gets more of the attention he deserves for this record.

Currently, you can order We Just Are from Amazon UK and you can purchase Nineteen Eighty-Four at CD Baby. Oddly enough, both albums, though very different, reinforce some similar notions of technology and humans and how we are both just made of information, whether DNA or binary code.

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About Me

I'm a music fan with a heavy bias toward music produced in the UK and the rest of Europe.
The sample tracks posted on this blog are there to encourage you to buy the featured artists' music. Please do so. The links are only here for a limited time, but if you would like any particular track that has already expired, let me know, and I will either refresh the link or email the file to you directly. And if you are one of the featured artists and want the MP3s to be taken down, please email me at: anglopunk@hotmail.com. Enjoy.

Nine Inch Nails w/ Death From Above 1979 + Queens of the Stone Age (2005)

Patrick Wolf w/ Bishi (2007)

Snow Patrol w/ Embrace (2005)

Snow Patrol w/ OK Go + Silversun Pickups (2007)

Sons and Daughters w/ Bodies of Water (2008)

Stars w/ The Details (2008)

Stars w/ Thurston Revival (2006)

Stroszek (2007)

The Killers w/ Ambulance Ltd (2004)

The New Pornographers w/ Novillero (2008)

The Ordinary Boys w/ Young Soul Rebels (2006)

The Rakes w/ The Young Knives (2006)

The Raveonettes w/ Black Acid (2008)

The Subways w/ The Mad Young Darlings (2006)

Tokyo Police Club w/ Smoosh + Attack in Black (2008)

The only certain thing that is left about meThere is no part of my body that has not been usedPity or pain, to show displeasure's shameEveryone I've loved or hated always seems to leave

So I turned myself to face me

But I've never caught a glimpse

Of how the others must see the faker

I'm much too fast to take that test

A dreaded sunny daySo let's go where we're happyAnd I meet you at the cemetry gatesOh, Keats and Yeats are on your sideA dreaded sunny daySo let's go where we're wantedAnd I meet you at the cemetry gatesKeats and Yeats are on your sideBut you lose 'cause weird lover Wilde is on mine

When they kick at your front doorHow you gonna come?With your hands on your headOr on the trigger of your gun

Charles Windsor, who's at the doorAt such an hour, who's at the doorIn the back of an old green CortinaYou're on your way to the guillotineHere the rabble comesThe kind you hoped were deadThey've come to chop, to chop off your head

Then you came with your breezeblocksSmashing up my face like a bus-stopYou think you're givingBut you're taking my life away

Won't someone give me more fun?(and the skin flies all around us)We kiss in his room to a popular tuneOh, real drowners

You don't want to hurt meBut see how deep the bullet liesUnaware I'm tearing you asunderOh there is thunder in our heartsIs there so much hate for the ones we loveTell me we both matter don't we

I don't know whetherTo over or under estimate youWhether to over or under estimate youFor when I come overYou then put me underPersonal taste is a matter of gender

I wake at dusk to go alone without a lightTo the unknownI want this night inside of meI want to feelI want this speedingI want that speeding

You'll never live like common peopleYou'll never do what common people doYou'll never fail like common peopleYou'll never watch your life slide out of viewAnd dance and drink and screwBecause there's nothing else to do

Plucked her eyebrows on the wayShaved her leg and then he was a sheShe says, hey babe,Take a walk on the wild sideSaid, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side

Hide on the promenadeEtch a postcard:How I dearly wish I was not hereIn the seaside town...that they forgot to bombCome, come, come - nuclear bomb

Back when we were kidsWe would always know when to stopAnd now all the good kids are messing upNobody has gained or accomplished anything

Prices have risen since the government fellCasualties increase as the enemy shellThe climate's unhealthy, flies and rats thriveAnd sooner or later the end will arriveThis is your correspondent, running out of tapeGunfire's increasing, looting, burning, rape

Well, maybe there's a god aboveBut all I've ever learned from loveWas how to shoot somebody who outdrew youIt's not a cry that you hear at nightIt's not somebody who's seen the lightIt's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

My body is your bodyI won't tell anybodyIf you want to use my bodyGo for it

Oh it's opening timeDown on Fascination StreetSo let's cut the conversationAnd get out for a bitBecause I feel it all fading and palingAnd I'm beggingTo drag you down with me

And you see, I kind of shivered to conformityDid you see the way I cowered to authorityYou see, my life, it's a series of compromises anywayIt's a sham, and I'm conditioned to accept it all, you see

Take in the country air, you'll never winGentlemen take polaroidsThey fall in love, they fall in love

We just want to emote til we're deadI know we suffer for fashionOr whateverWe don't want these days to ever endWe just want to emasculate them foreverForever, foreverPretty sirens don't go flatIt's not supposed to happen like that

There's no perfume I can buyMake me smell like myselfSo I put on perfumeTo make me smell like someone elseIn bed

I got love for you if you were born in the 80's, the 80'sI've got hugs for you if you were born in the 80's, the 80's

Does his makeup in his roomDouse himself with cheap perfumeEyeholes in a paper bagGreatest lay I ever hadKind of guy who mates for lifeGotta help him find a wifeWe're a couple, when our bodies double

Summer rains are hereSavaged beauty lifeFalling here from graceSister feeling callCruising land to landNo faith no creed no soulHalf a world awayBeauty sleeps in timeSound and fury play

North to southEmptyRunning onBravadoAs if to say, as if to sayHe doesn't like chocolateHe's born a liar, he'll die a liarSome things will never be different

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Well Daft Punk is playing at my house, my houseI've waited 7 years and 15 daysThere's every kid for miles at my house, my houseAnd the neighbors can't...call the policeThere's a fist fight brewin' at my house, my houseBecause the jocks can't...get in the door

I just can't help believingThough believing sees me cursed

I am trying to sayWhat I want to sayWithout having to say "I love you"

It took 10 years to realise why the angels start to cryWhen you go home down the mainYour happy smileYour funny name

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Doesn't she look a million with her hairagami setHair kisses 'n' hair architectureYes, she's a beautiful brunette angel from heaven with her hairagami setHair kisses 'n' hair architectureAugment a beautiful brunette

How does it feelTo treat me like you doWhen you've laid your hands upon meAnd told me who you are

You must let her goShe's not crying

BaitingFeeling like I'm waitingModern timesValentinesHatingHating to distractionJust leave them aloneWhipcrackGirls in the backGirls in the back

They say come back to earth and start getting real, yeahI say come back to earth and start getting realI know I can't

So I walk right up to youAnd you walk all over meAnd I ask you what you wantAnd you tell me what you need

The problem of leisureWhat to do for pleasureIdeal love a new purchaseA market of the sensesDream of the perfect lifeEconomic circumstancesThe body is good businessSell out, maintain the interest

Sitting in my armchair thinking again and again and againGoing round in a circle I can't get outThen I look around thinking day and night and dayThen you look around - there must be some explanationAnd the tension builds

They only want you when you're seventeenWhen you're twenty-oneYou're no funThey take a polaroid and let you goSay they'll let you know

No consolation prizesSpit out your lies and chewing gumCut off your hair yeah that's it!If you look like that I swear I'm gonna love you more

All the neighbors are startin' up a fireBurning all the old folks, the witches and the liars.My eyes are covered by the hands of my unborn kidsBut my heart keeps watchin' through the skin of my eyelids

Prince charmingPrince charmingRidicule is nothing to be scared ofDon't you ever, don't you everStop being dandy, showing me you're handsome